Well this week we have had lots going on! We started the week with Mr Vauaghan who gave us a masterclass on opera. We learnt so much about the different operas and the stories behind them. As usual he brought lots of different instruments and played parts of the different operas for us. We decided that we all like opera music and would like to go to see one. On Tuesday we had some post. We received a package which contained a photograph and a letter from a soldier. When we used the aurasma app on the photograph it told us that we had a challenge. Also in the package was a number of artefacts from WW1. We decided to investigate them and try and work out what clues we had. After school today we had our first session of 'App Club'. We found out all about apps and explored different types of apps working out why they where made and for whom they are targeted. We cannot wait to start developing our own apps. We are very excited. We explored the start of WW1 on Wednesday and interrogated military records to try to find out what we could about the soldiers of the local area. We have found out lots of interesting information and by looking at military records and census returns from 1911 we found a soldier who said he was 18 when he enlisted but according to census he would only have been 16 on that date. All our information is going to go on a special website called 'Cwmclydach Remembers'. The information will be uploaded over the next few weeks. Our Code Club began on Wednesday too. We had lots of new faces, plus lots of older children wanting to further develop their coding skills. We found out that we were going to be a 'Star Code Club' which means we are one of 20 code clubs from the UK who will promote code clubs and help others set up their own clubs. We were very excited. We got straight to work by using 'Scratch' and 'Kodu' and began developing those new skills. On Thursday we had a theatre company visit us. The play gave performed was called, 'Your country needs you!' which told the story of the start of WW1, life in the trenches and the first Christmas. It was very moving and we learnt a great deal about WW1. We have also been looking at lots of source materials and we have been exploring what information is important. We decided that we wanted to create a TV news report so we have been reading information for the main idea and composing notes on WW1. We cannot wait until next week when we create our newspaper reports.
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Well the summer holidays have flown by. We have all had a relaxing break and this week we returned excitedly to start our time in Year 4. This week we have been very busy already. We worked together to set our 'Class Pledge' We had lots of discussions and we had to think about how to make sure the pledge we make is positive so no 'Don't' rules' were allowed. We came up with a 'Class Charter' which we will unveil next week. We began our exploration of World War One this week by finding out about why the war started and the conditions in the trenches. We wrote a diary entry as a soldier which was really hard as we had to pretend to be a soldier and think about how they would have felt. We sketched poppies as they are used to commemorate all the soldiers who fought for us. On friday we discussed our aspirations and what we want to work towards. We had lots of great career choices for our futures so we decided to create a augmented reality display for our classroom. We videoed each other talking about what we wanted to be and we also took photographs. We will now create a display so that when you scan our photographs you will see our videos. We cannot wait to create it !
A great start to our term with lots of exciting activities planned for the next few weeks. we cannot wait! Over the past few weeks we have been extremely busy helping Phileas Fogg circumnavigate the World in less than 80 days. All our work is documented on a website which we created. www.phileasfogg2014.weebly.com Please have a look at all that we have been doing.
Well today we embarked on a picnic to celebrate the fact that Phileas Fogg travelled around the World in only 45 days and he won the wager with the alien. So we went to Brecon Mountain Railway so that we could travel on a steam train and then have a picnic together to celebrate all the work we have been doing. Now we knew that Phileas was with @alienfromvegaon his planet so we did not think we would see him. But to our surprise when we got to the platform the ispace alien spacecraft was there and then along came Phileas Fogg. Well we were so excited to see him and he agreed to join us on our celebration picnic. Here are some of our photographs of our amazing day. What! What! Well we have had another really busy and exciting week. Our week started with a message from Phileas Fogg in the form of a video on his website. He asked us to decipher a message that had been written in hieroglyphics. We researched hieroglyphics to help us find the code. Here is the message. Message deciphered. Help Phileas tell his story As you can see our task was to tell the story of Phileas Fogg but it said ‘fortune favours the brave’ so we decided not to write a traditional story but to write either a pop up book for the pupils in Foundation Phase or a 3d book using 'Augmented Reality'. So this week we have been exploring ideas of where Phileas will go and what he can do there, creating storyboards of his adventures and writing our first drafts of the story. We have had so much fun but we really cannot wait until next week where we begin to make our books using DT or IT. Watch this space! Phileas is now on his way to Bombay in India and so far it has taken him 23 days. He is currently sailing the Arabian Sea and should arrive in Bombay later this evening. Have a look at his journey so far. We have had lots of fun this week in art. We have been looking buildings and we were ready to use Sketchup to produce 3d designs. We made some fantastic designs, which now we are going to make into models by using the 3d printer next week. We cannot wait! We had a challenge this week to grow the biggest pumpkin. We found out all about the conditons for plants to grow and how best to look after our plants. We have now planted the pumpkin seeds and we are waiting (patiently) for the seeds to germinate. On Wednesday we had a very exciting day as a film crew came to school to film us about our IT project. Some of us felt like movie stars. There were lights and cameras around the school. We had some tips to help us with our movie making too!
well this week we have been so busy. We had a challenge from Phileas Fogg just before half term to create a brochure for him. Now this week as part of that challenge we have been presenting our research into Egypt, evaluating holiday brochures and creating our own. We uploaded the work on the Phileas Fogg website which can be found here Now hopefully Phileas should be in Egypt as we speak and using the information we sent him to enjoy his time in the country and decide to stay in one of the hotels we sent him to look at. In our class we also are putting together the information that Phileas is sending us. Here is a photograph of our display so far with the postcards he has sent, brochures and also the souvenirs from London and Paris.
We had another message on Thursday. Phileas said… Well I know I need to travel across Europe over the next week and then what! what! I will arrive in Egypt. So watch my new upload (I so love these new technological words) and see if you can help me. As we have the challenge to create a brochure, for the half term holidays we need to prepare an oral presentation on Egypt. We can then use the information we find to help us create our brochures. Below is our half term task. We are going to enjoy our half term break now but we cannot wait to return to find out what happens next...
We were set a number of challenges this week by Phileas Fogg. On Wednesday we were asked to complete some investigations. Paris, France We received a video and a message followed. So I hope you can help me with this task. Maybe you can work in your talking partners as Miss calls you and find out the relevant information. I have sent Miss a list of places I originally travelled, so can you start with those first? I was thinking as I was waiting for the video to upload that you could split in three teams to try to find out the information. Time –If I took my original route around the world how long would it take to go around the world today? How much would it cost to travel that route? Distance – What is the distance travelled if I took the original route? Prices – What is the costs of going around the world if I took my original route? Good luck and don't forget to share your information with each other and, of course, Me. Toddle pip. Our Report into costs, distances and time taken to travel around the world We have been so busy this week we have not had time to blog at all.
Where do we start? On Monday 19th May 2014 at Cwmclydach Primary School a remarkable event occurred. A hot air balloon crashed into @alienfromvega's spaceship and landed in our reception yard. We met the remarkable Phileas Fogg who is a famous explorer. @alienfrom vega made a wager with Phileas that if he went around the world in less than 80 days then he could travel to @alienfromvega's planet. Phileas Fogg asked us to help. So this week we have created a website which documents the travels of Phileas Fogg as he undertakes the challenge with our help of course. Please come and look at what Phileas Fogg is doing and what challenges we have undertaken. Click on the link below to have a look at all we have been doing. We have had a great day today full of mathematical investigations. The day began with us working in hwb@cwm. We had a problem to solve, Harry was lost! We learnt all about cells, columnns and rows in Microsoft Excel and by plotting the jumbled messages we had a riddle. When we solved the riddle we worked out that Harry was lost in the USA. Then we learnt how to add, subtract, multiply and divide using Microsoft Excel. We created a mathematics game so that we can now work out all our sums without having to do any work. We then went to Miss Howells’ Sweet Emporium and used the formula sum so that we could work out what sweets we could buy with our budget of £5.00. It was awesome, some of us managed to spent exactly £5.00. This afternoon the fun continued as we worked on our geography topic, ‘Through the window’. We decided to litter pick around our school so we could see if we were taking care of the environment ‘Through the window’. We all worked really hard and managed to fill 16 bags of rubbish. Then we used a forcemeter to weigh each bag. We weighed them in grams and decided that we would use our new knowledge of Microsoft Excel to create a chart of the information. When we used the sum formula we had managed to collect 21350 grams of rubbish. We then divided the cell by 1000 to work out how many kg were collected. The total was 21.35 kg.
We enjoyed our day today especially the litter pick. I wonder what the rest of the week will entail? We have been compiling some of the wonderful adventures we have had after the alien from Vega crash landed in our school. As you can see we have had lots of challenges, solved lots of problems, worked very closely collaboratively with our friends in Rabbsfarm and had lots of fun! We hope you enjoy looking at our journey so far. We wonder what is next?
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AuthorWe are the year 4 class at Cwmclydach Primary School. We love exploring words, robotics, weird science and coding. Archives
March 2016
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